Most photographers enjoy sharing their photos and letting others in on the joy of image-making. Sometimes, that even comes with social or financial rewards. But considering how much time, effort and love goes into the taking of each photo, the last thing you want is anyone trying to pass them off as their own. Sadly, it happens all too often, which is why a platform named Pixsy looks promising — it offers to track down and bust unapproved copies of your images around the web (…invites below…).
Despite still being in private beta, the service is remarkably efficient. As you sign up, you add the domains and social accounts you own to your profile. The images on these domains are scanned by Pixsy, and each is then matched against a thorough, visual search of the web. If this comes back clean, you’re in the clear. If Pixsy does discover any copyright infringements, however — as it did during my testing — it then offers to help you resolve the issue. This can include merely flagging the offending image for later investigation, or chasing up a claim.
Submitting a claim is a simplified version of filling in a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice, requiring a few details about you, your picture and the apparent infringement. You can also instruct Pixsy to negotiate a licensing arrangement on your behalf, with the platform taking a 50% cut of whatever it manages to squeeze out of the photo-thieving foe. That might sound like a lot, but compared to Getty’s monstrous fee, it is pretty reasonable.
In this early beta phase, Pixsy is only able to deal with claims against US-based entities, and claims against individuals can’t always be handled; the founder of Pixsy, Daniel Foster, tells me that the plan is to close these loopholes as soon as possible.
Claims are considered swiftly, though, and given the difficulty of dealing with such issues yourself, I think the platform is destined to be popular.
You can check out Pixsy here, but the first ten folks to tweet about this post will get early access.
Extra Time — LiveBlend (iOS) Offers Live Double-Exposures
Much of the time, double exposures used to appear on film because someone had forgotten to turn to the next 35mm frame. But occasionally, this effect was used to stunning artistic effect, and image-blending is still popular in the digital age. LiveBlend, a new iOS app, aims to make image-coupling better than ever by allowing you to compose your second image with the first on-screen.
The result is that these ghostly images can be far more accurately aligned, generally resulting in more creativity and impact. I personally love it, and it’s a snip at $1.
You can check out LiveBlend in the App Store here.
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